It's A Smalley World

April 29, 2009

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman is blaming the Great Depression on Franklin Roosevelt’s support for the "Hoot-Smalley Act." Before ganging up on Bachman for mistaking "Hoot-Smalley" for "Smoot-Hawley" or for attributing its passage to Roosevelt (it happened under Hoover) or for saying that Calvin Coolidge had to deal with a worse recession than Roosevelt did (he didn't--and she is probably thinking of the recession that happened under Harding), note that Bachman really made an innocent mistake. She was clearly conflating Smoot and Hawley with the Roy Smalley III, the Minnesota Twins shortstop. Here is the video from TPM.